If you’re a South African living in Australia or New Zealand, you’re ahead of South Africa by six to ten hours depending on where you are. That time difference rules out a lot of options for connecting with people back home during reasonable hours – but it creates one that’s genuinely convenient: when your workday ends in the afternoon, it’s still morning in South Africa.

A session at 08:30 or 09:00 South African time is 16:30 or 17:00 in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. It’s 14:30 or 15:00 in Perth. It’s 18:30 in Auckland. These are times that work – after work, before the evening, in your own home or a quiet private space. No commute to an office. No waiting room. No need to explain to a local therapist what braai culture, load-shedding anxiety, or the complexity of leaving South Africa actually means.

South Africans in Australia

Australia has one of the largest and most established South African communities in the world. From Perth and its particularly strong South African presence, to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide – South Africans are woven into Australian life in a way that can make the experience of emigration feel both easier and more disorienting than expected.

Easier, because the country is English-speaking, relatively familiar in culture, and outdoors-oriented in ways that feel like home. More disorienting, because “almost the same” is sometimes harder to navigate than clearly different. The things that don’t translate – the South African directness, the specific humour, the weight of what was left behind – can feel smaller and harder to name than they would in a more obviously foreign country. My page on grief covers this “grief that doesn’t have a name” – including the grief of leaving, watching from afar, and what it’s like to be the one who stayed when others left.

What brings South Africans in Australia to counselling

The specific grief of leaving a country you love and feared at the same time
Navigating identity in a country that feels familiar but isn’t home
Relationship strain – between partners adjusting at different speeds, or with family in South Africa
The hypervigilance around safety that often persists long after the original threat is removed – see more on trauma and crime-related hypervigilance
Career stress in a competitive environment with different professional norms
Loneliness that can exist inside a busy, functional life abroad

Perth - a note for the Western Australian community

Perth has a disproportionately large South African population and a culture that has absorbed South African influence significantly. The irony is that this can make things both better and harder: there is community, there are South African shops and churches and braai spots, but there is also a version of South Africa that has been frozen at the point of departure. Working through the experience of emigration with a counsellor who is still in South Africa – and can offer a perspective from the inside, not the preserved memory of it – is something Perth-based clients often find distinctly useful.

South Africans in New Zealand

New Zealand has attracted significant South African emigration, particularly from families seeking a quieter pace, better safety, and a more secure future for children. The country is stunning, the people are warm, and the adjustment can still be surprisingly hard.

New Zealand sits ten hours ahead of South Africa, which makes it the most time zone-challenging of the common South African emigration destinations. But a session at 08:00 SAST is 18:00 NZST – still within the evening and accessible after a working day. We can find a time that works.

What brings South Africans in New Zealand to counselling

The distance – New Zealand is further from South Africa than almost anywhere, and that distance is felt
Adjustment to a culture that is warm but takes time to penetrate beyond surface friendliness
The particular complexity of raising children who are becoming New Zealanders while parents remain South African in their bones
Grief and anxiety that was brought across and hasn’t yet been addressed
The sense of having made the right decision and still being sad – which is hard to explain to people who stayed

What I can help you with

My focus is trauma, anxiety and depression – and for South Africans who have emigrated, these three things often show up together in ways that aren’t always named clearly. The grief of leaving is real. The residual anxiety that came with life in South Africa doesn’t disappear when you board the plane. And the low-level depression of building a life that is functional but not yet fully yours can sit quietly for years before it surfaces.

Trauma and its long-term effects – including the hypervigilance many South Africans carry without realising
Anxiety – chronic, situational, or the kind that has transferred from one context to another, including the anxiety of return for those considering coming back
Depression, including the exhausting high-functioning kind that nobody around you can see
Grief and loss – of people, of a version of yourself, of a country
Relationship difficulties – partnership strain, family at a distance, building new friendships in a new place
Identity – the question of who you are when you’re no longer in the place that made you

If homesickness is part of what you are carrying, there is a short, free meditation for homesickness you can use any time, written with South Africans abroad in mind.

How it works

Sessions are 60 minutes via Zoom. We start with a WhatsApp conversation to agree a time that works in your time zone – please mention whether you’re in Perth, the eastern states, or New Zealand so I can work out the overlap accurately. Payment is by credit or debit card online, invoiced in ZAR. See the pricing page for current rates.

Questions about booking or pricing?

Read about how sessions work or what it costs — or skip straight to asking. No commitment in making contact.

Frequently asked questions

Will the time zone actually work?

For most Australian clients, yes – comfortably. The sweet spot is South African morning sessions (08:00–10:00 SAST), which land at the end of the afternoon or early evening in the eastern states and at mid-afternoon in Perth. For New Zealand clients, 08:00 SAST is 18:00 NZST. It requires some scheduling intention but it’s very workable. We sort this out via WhatsApp before anything is booked.

I've been in Australia for over ten years. Is what I'm carrying still worth bringing to counselling?

Absolutely. Many of the things South African emigrants carry don’t have a natural expiry date – the anxiety, the complicated feelings about having left, the grief that never quite got processed. The length of time abroad doesn’t make these things smaller. Sometimes it makes them harder to name, which is exactly where counselling is useful.

Do you understand the Australian experience of being South African, or just the South African experience?

Both, in the sense that I work with Australian-based South African clients regularly and have a clear picture of what that specific combination involves. I’m not Australian and I won’t pretend to understand Australian culture from the inside – but that’s not what you’re coming to me for.

What therapeutic approach do you use?

Person-centred (Rogerian) therapy as the relational foundation, with narrative therapy as the primary working lens – see the section above for how this typically applies to clients in Australia and New Zealand.

I'm thinking about moving back to South Africa. Can counselling help with that?

Yes – the anxiety and uncertainty around returning is something I work with regularly, alongside the more commonly discussed anxiety of leaving. See the Anxiety Counselling page for more on both directions of this.

Online counselling for South Africans in Australia and New Zealand - a session after your workday, with a counsellor who gets it